Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Advice. Purrfect Passion. A Purrfect Gnomeful

Chapter 10

Odelia glanced around the room. Whoever this Heather Gallop had been, she wasn’t one of those people who make a mess of their hotel rooms. The woman’s clothes were meticulously hung in the closet, and as she checked the small collection she saw that Heather had impeccable taste, too. Three very nice dresses that must have cost a pretty penny, and even an evening dress. Judging from the pile of underwear she hadn’t come to stay for a long time, at the most a week or so.

“I found her driver’s license, sir,” said the cop who’d phoned Chase. “Illinois,” he said as he handed the card to the detective.

“Why does a woman from Illinois travel all the way to Long Island to meet with Dan Goory?” Chase muttered. “To sell him a copy of a movie that doesn’t exist?”

The room was otherwise sparse: apart from the clothes in the closet, the suitcase under the bed and the gnomes and portrait on the table, there was nothing that gave a sense of the woman’s personality, or offered a glimpse into her life.

“I’ll see if I can’t get in touch with her folks back home,” said Chase. “See if we can’t lift the veil of who this woman was and what she was doing here.”

Odelia nodded. The receptionist had told them Heather had checked in three days ago, but he couldn’t recall her having received any visitors. He also knew she drove a rented car, which she’d parked in the hotel lot, and that she’d paid with a credit card, not cash, but apart from that, there wasn’t a lot he could tell them about the mystery woman.

“I doubt she flew in simply to engage in an affair with Dan,” said Odelia. As her uncle seemed to think, and presumably the entire population of Hampton Cove. At least no one would be holding Odelia’s pen when she wrote her article detailing that morning’s shocking events. She wasn’t going to allow the Gazette to become a forum to slander its founder and editor, so she’d already put the newspaper social media pages on lockdown. No one was going to slander her boss on his own platform. She’d see to that at least.

Of course she couldn’t control what people would say in the Hampton Cove Facebook group, or on the streets and in the shops.

All she could do was find the real killer, because she was absolutely certain Dan was innocent.

Chase got another phone call, and when he returned moments later he looked a little baffled.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Well, I called UPS after what you told me. That was them returning my call.”

“And?” she asked. “What did they say?”

“That there never was a delivery at the Gazette this morning. Whoever this UPS man was, he most certainly wasn’t sent by them.”

She shared a look of concern with her partner. “Which means he was probably the killer,” she said as she voiced the thought that was going through both their heads.

“Come on, Dan,” Chief Alec said, leaning back in his chair. “How long have we known each other? And here you sit insulting my intelligence by lying to me!”

“I’m not lying, Alec!” said Dan. “I’m telling you the truth!”

They were seated across the table from one another in interview room number one, and frankly Alec was quickly losing his patience with the newspaperman.

“Look, we both know how this is going to go,” said Alec. “No judge will believe you when you tell your cockamamie story about your windshield wipers.”

“But it happened! Just check my phone!”

“I did. You got a call at the time you said you did. Unknown caller. Could have been an insurance company trying to sell you life insurance. Could have been a mobile phone salesman. Could have been anyone.” He leaned forward. “Just get it off your chest, Dan. Trust me, you’ll feel much better when you do. So who was she, huh? Old girlfriend? Was she pregnant, is that it? You lost it when she said she wanted to keep the baby?”

“Look, how many times do I have to tell you: I never saw the woman before. She called me out of the blue, and told me she wanted to meet. So I said sure, drop by any time. So she said she’d come in at eight thirty, and later sent me a one-word text.”

“Gnomeo.”

“Exactly. Which is how I knew it had something to do with the club.”

“The Gnomeos.”

“Right. Happens all the time that complete strangers come up to me with information they think might be relevant for the Gnomeos, or the magazine.”

“So if you arranged to meet at eight thirty, why was she dead when Odelia walked in at eight ten?”

“I told you—I stepped out for just a minute.”

“Your windshield wipers.”

“Exactly!”

“You actually told her to meet you at eight, didn’t you? So you could avoid her meeting Odelia? You didn’t want nosy parkers around when you two hooked up?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Only Odelia was early, wasn’t she? Arrived before you could get rid of the body. Is that why you ran out of your office, to bring your car around so you could get rid of the body?”

“In full view of the whole street? You’re crazy, Alec.”

Alec wagged a finger in the man’s face. “Watch what you say, Dan. I’m still chief of police.”

“You’re also a fool if you think I’d murder a woman I’ve never even seen before and try to get rid of the body by shoving her body into the trunk of my car.”

“Ha!” said Alec with a note of triumph in his voice. “I never said trunk.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake…”

“I don’t know, Dan,” said the Chief, shaking his head. “I’m disappointed in you, that’s all I can say.”

“Well, at least that’s something we have in common,” Dan snapped. “Cause I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“What did I tell you about watching your tone?”

“You’re wasting time. While you’re harassing me the real killer is getting away.”

“Oh? And who do you think the real killer is?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Jack Warner, of course.”

“The chairman of the Maria Power Society?”

“Of course! He must have found out this woman was going to hand me something of value and wanted to stop her. So he killed her and took whatever it was she was going to give me and is now laughing his ass off at the incompetence of our local police force.”

“And what could possibly be so valuable that it would be worth killing for?” asked the Chief, not hiding the skepticism in his voice.

“The only remaining copy of Rupert Finkelstein’s Romeo and Juliet,” said Dan.

The Chief stared at the man. “That’s just an urban legend.”

“An urban legend that just might be real.”

As a big fan of Maria Power himself, and a member of the Gnomeos, it struck Alec that Dan was probably playing him. “Finkelstein destroyed every single copy of that movie. It’s the story we all know and regret.”

“Well, I heard differently, and trust me when I say that Jack Warner believes it is true, too. There must have been a copy left, and somehow Heather Gallop managed to get her hands on it and was about to offer it to me.” He slumped. “And so Jack killed her for it.”

Chapter 11

Once again Dooley and I were invited to sit in on an interview with a suspect. This particular suspect was a man named Jack Warner. When Chase got the call from his superior officer—Odelia’s uncle—to have a quiet word with Mr. Warner, Odelia had pleaded successfully with her future husband to be included in the tête-à-tête, and of course she’d negotiated for Dooley and me to be included, hoping we could chat with the man’s pets, if he had any.

Much to my dismay, though, Jack Warner was a man utterly devoid of pets of any persuasion, though by his own admission he’d once owned a Chihuahua, whose urn now took pride of place on his mantel. A notion I found a little creepy, to be honest with you.